“You called him a ‘wrong ’un’. Why? Birds of a feather know each other? Is that the idea? Or do you really know something about him? Oh, and don’t lie.”

Commander Bobby Owen of the Yard is on his way to visit Willoughby Wynne, concerning a gang of thieves operating in the immediate rural neighbourhood. But when murder comes, amid the loganberry bushes, it is a suspected blackmailer, not gangster, who is found strangled. Mr Wynne demands to be considered a suspect himself, but the list isn’t short. It seems more than one person in the district has been living a double life, one they are anxious to protect. And among the petty feuds, petty criminals and respectable gentry, a criminal mastermind is moving anonymously, pulling strings. Bobby will need a very large pair of shears to cut them this time.

Dark is the Clue is the thirty-third novel in the Bobby Owen Mystery series, originally published in 1955. This new edition features a bonus Bobby Owen short story, and an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Praise

“What is distinction? … in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.”DOROTHY L. SAYERS